


Mario Kart with my Flatmate & an Announcement

by knitbelove (ladymac111)



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Dev (mentioned) - Freeform, Fluff, M/M, Niall (mentioned) - Freeform, Penny (POV character), Roommates, Secret Snowflake Exchange, Twitch Streamers AU, Video & Computer Games, oh my god they were roommates, poggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:15:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28102287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladymac111/pseuds/knitbelove
Summary: Twitch streamer Simon "HeroSnow" welcomes his flatmate Baz "BazzaT" for a special stream.
Relationships: Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Comments: 7
Kudos: 20
Collections: Secret Snowflake 2020





	Mario Kart with my Flatmate & an Announcement

**Author's Note:**

> 2020 Secret Snowflake Exchange gift for Min! I was absolutely delighted to get your prompt for a Twitch streamer AU, and I hope that I gave you what you were hoping for despite my extreme bias as a lifelong obsessed Simmer….  
> Thank you to Were Bear for the beta read!  
> Please see the end note for a glossary of Twitch terms, though hopefully it won’t get in the way of enjoying the story if you don’t understand the jargon.  
> The banner is a pair of Sims I made! You can download them from my Gallery profile (Knitbelove).

PENELOPE

Simon is a brave, brave idiot. This stream is going to be a hot mess.

I've been a mod on his Twitch channel for five years now, since he first hit a hundred followers, and these days there's rarely less than two thousand people watching. Baz is similarly popular (he hasn't got as many sub points, but he's north of half a million YouTube subscribers) and he's told his followers he'll be here today, so I'm bracing for it. They've said we can go emote only if it gets out of hand, but we don't really want to do that, and slow mode is on but honestly means nothing if we've got thousands and thousands of people in chat.

Today is going to be intense.

The steam goes live, and Simon and Baz are both sat in front of Simon's computer. Baz is lounging in his chair while Simon looks intently at his stream labs. "And here we are, hello everyone, welcome to _gamer time_."

My phone chimes, and I hear Baz's do the same on stream. He pulls it out with a surprised look, and then laughs. "Got your alert, here I am."

Simon grins at him over his shoulder then turns back to his screen. "Hey everyone, hi, welcome to the stream. Yeah that's Baz, you all know him don't you?"

Baz is tapping at his phone, presumably tweeting that he's live on Simon's channel, and then his mods are in Simon's Discord with the rest of us.

 _Gang's all here,_ I type to the mods. _Ready for chaos?_

Dev posts a gif and Niall spams some emotes -- I don't know how Baz gets by with that kind of silliness, but they must be good at modding.

"Yeah, sorry," Simon says, "point rewards are off today. Since we've got Baz with us we're expecting way more people than usual and my mods will make my life miserable if I work them too hard. They'll be back next time, I promise! You can redeem your self-timeouts and hydration reminders then."

The chat is suddenly overrun with Baz's plumbob emotes; Simon makes a bitten-off _woah_ sound and Baz leans in, laughing.

"Yes, hello Simmer Scrum, I see you! Let's try not to spam, all right? Thanks for coming though, I know a lot of you have never watched anyone but me and you're brave for venturing out."

"Oh Jesus," Simon mutters, and then starts rattling off thanks for all of the subs and bits that have started rolling in, stumbling in his haste to get everyone as Baz sits back, watching him with a soft smile and hearts in his eyes. "Zyx, Plasma, Simmy, thanks for the resubs, tier three _eighteen_ months from Bazza-- oh god, Baz!" He turns his chair, and Baz is trying to contain his laughter as Simon reaches to whack him. "Tosser, confusing me on stream. Eighteen months already, though?"

"We should name the Twitch baby Basil," Baz says, grinning. "I did that before I tweeted, by the way. Your alerts are way behind."

Simon rolls his eyes. "You named the first one Basil, this one is Simon." He sighs. "Okay guys, I need to mute my alerts and let them catch up but I promise I'll get to all of you in a little bit. So yeah, you all see my flatmate Baz is here and my stream title says so, and that I've got an announcement. I do want to wait a minute to let everyone get here before we do that." He looks at Baz, who scoots his chair closer. "What do you reckon, should we play a game first?"

"Chat will lose their minds if we make them wait," Baz says. "I think we can kill a few more minutes talking." He glances at Simon's screen. "Yeah okay, I think I need to introduce my followers to you."

"Oh, right, and mine to you. Okay everyone, so this is Baz, he's been my flatmate for the past two years, since we finished uni. We met through a mutual friend, my mod CopperPenny. Baz is a streamer too, his channel is BazzaT and he mostly plays The Sims 4."

“I’m an EA Game Changer,” Baz says in his best commercial announcer voice. "I play Animal Crossing sometimes too."

Simon nods. "Real pogchamps play Animal Crossing."

"And those of you here from my stream," Baz says, "thanks so much for coming over. Obviously this is HeroSnow, or Simon. He plays a lot of … er, how are they called?"

"Multiplayer online battle arena games. And real time strategy."

"Yeah, what he said. Things like Dota."

Simon rolls his eyes, and I don't know if Baz is genuinely fifteen years out of the loop, or if he's winding Simon up. "I've been playing a lot of Overwatch," Simon says. "And Pokemon."

Baz nods. "I play Pokemon too, but everyone plays Pokemon, right?" He pauses, reading, and then grins. "They're asking about your accent."

Simon grins. "I'm from Liverpool, like the Beatles."

"Not like Plumbella," Baz adds.

"I _wish_ I was Plumbella," Simon mutters.

"She's Northern too, but in Yorkshire," Baz explains. "Northeast. Lancashire is west, near Ireland."

They both read for a moment -- the chat is moving incredibly fast -- and Baz sits up excitedly. "Yes, the long overdue skin tone update! I was planning to stream it tomorrow, but they released it early. I've had a look at it already and it's really good, I promise we'll do that on my stream tomorrow. I just already had plans today and couldn't make a video." He grins at the screen. "Yeah, I can finally make Barry actually look like me. We'll spend a lot of time in CAS this week."

Baz has been working with other EA Game Changers to fix and expand the darker skin tones in the Sims. He made some custom content for it a couple of years ago, so at least his personal Sim self looks like him, but now it's finally come to the official game.

Simon snorts. "Be kind, everyone."

A few people in chat are being rude; I swoop in with the other mods and start issuing warnings. Anyone in Simon's chat who's got an issue with Baz bring brown and proud of it should definitely not be here.

"Ignore the trolls, guys," Baz says, sounding tired. "Let the mods handle it, it's why we buy them pizza."

"All right, all right," Simon says, and flashes a megawatt smile directly into the camera. "We've been live for fifteen minutes and there's like five million people here so it's time for the announcement." He licks his lips and glances at Baz, who nods and lays his hand on Simon's arm, just barely in frame.

Chat immediately goes insane. The boys will see it in a couple of seconds, hopefully they can get it out before they get distracted….

Simon takes a breath. "Baz and I are happy to announce that we're a couple."

Chat goes even more insane. I barely even hear Baz talking, I'm so desperately focused on trying to mod this chaos….

"Take it easy, chat," Baz laughs. "No, we weren't dating when we started living together, we've been boyfriends for six months now. We started sharing a year and a half before."

The explicit and homophobic comments in chat are mostly getting picked up by auto-mod, thank goodness. Baz's stream is family friendly, but Simon's audience aren't so well-behaved.

"No, no, no!" Simon says. "We will not be kissing on stream!"

"Premarital kissing?" Baz says, mock-horrified. "Disgusting."

Simon laughs and takes his hand, lacing their fingers together and gazing at him fondly. "Oh, the scandal of hand-holding."

"You're a menace, Snow." Baz is smiling bigger than I've ever seen him. "That's adult content, what about my reputation?"

Niall posts the "this is fine" meme in the mods' Discord channel. I think Baz actually likes winding up their audience….

"And they were roommates," Simon reads off the chat, bright red and laughing. Dozens of people immediately respond with _oh my god they were roommates_ amongst the absolute landslide of emotes. 

"So that was the big announcement," Baz says, struggling to control his smile. "Simon and I are dating, we've been together six months now so it seemed safe to share as it's going quite well."

"We're in looooove," Simon coos, and Baz gives him a backhand whack. I'll do the same when I can finally see him.

"That's about enough of this," Baz says, though he's definitely glowing from the hugely positive reception. "We're gamers, I think we should game a bit."

"Yeah," Simon says, then, "oh my god, chat, I promise I'll get to your alerts but there are definitely like a billion and I feel like I'm going to vibrate into space, give us a minute. I just want to enjoy being out with my boyfriend for two or three heartbeats."

Baz is laughing, but I know him well enough to tell he's overwhelmed too. He reaches over and picks up his Switch. "Here, let's play Mario Kart."

"I'm going to destroy you, you know."

"Don't rub it in, we've not even started."

Simon hooks up the console while Baz glances at the chat. "Oh my god, _no_ , we're not going to kiss. Stop asking." He picks up his phone, and a moment later he's posted in Discord.

_Start warning them about asking us to kiss. We're not doing it on stream._

Simon glances to the side. "Yeah, guys, no more kissing talk. The mods are going to start giving time outs."

That's all the permission I need; a few of these people are really on my nerves.

And then Simon posts in the Discord:

_Baz you should make our Sims kiss on your stream._

Baz replies instantly:

_Absolutely not._

A couple seconds later I see his reaction on the stream, a half-choked inhale as he tries to not show anything. His Sim kids will be completely insufferable if they think his Sim self might get intimate with a Simon Sim.

The Switch home screen finally comes up, and Baz hands one of his AirPods to Simon. "Not very professional, but the best we can do today."

"Good enough," Simon says, taking a controller from him next as Baz loads into Mario Kart. He glances at the chat and smiles. "Yeah of course he's a gamer, you think I could ever date someone who wasn't? Gender is unimportant to me in a partner, but Mario Kart is vital."

Baz scoffs and rolls his eyes, but he's biting back a grin. "I'm pants at Mario Kart."

"But you like playing it anyway."

"I like playing games with you."

Simon turns bright pink. "All right, enough."

They start the game, and Baz honestly isn't that bad. I know he and Simon play on their own a lot; Simon told me their first kiss was him impulsively planting one on Baz for winning a race.

Chat are behaving themselves, mostly, so I check back in on the Discord and see Dev and Niall having a crisis about some truly awful hate directed at Baz from a longtime subscriber. I chime in that honestly it's best for them to simply ban them and not let Baz's happiness at the warm reception to his coming out online be ruined by seeing something like that. 

"Yeah, poggers!!" Simon crows, crossing the finish line in the game and throwing his arms in the air.

"I hate this," Baz whinges, but there's a smile tugging at the corner of his lip. "I'm only good at building, why am I doing this?"

"You were amazing!" Simon says. "Didn't fall off the track at all!"

Baz huffs. "It's embarrassing. Next time we stream together you're playing Sims."

"Sure." Simon looks at him fondly. "If it'll make you happy."

"God, don't," Baz mumbles, covering his face with his hand, and I'm pretty sure his ears are going red.

Chat is an explosion of heart emotes. I think this might just go well after all….

**Author's Note:**

> Bits: One way that streamers get paid, viewers buy bits from Twitch and then give them to streamers. Sometimes viewers earn bits from Twitch other ways too. 100 bits = $1 to the streamer  
> CAS: Create-A-Sim mode in The Sims.  
> Dota: hugely popular mod to Warcraft that came out in 2003 and heavily influenced the genre.  
> EA Game Changer: an independent streamer/YouTuber who is occasionally sponsored by EA (maker of The Sims) to consult on or promote content. Sometimes they’re paid, sometimes they just get early access to new releases.  
> Point rewards: Twitch viewers earn points by watching and interacting with streams. Streamers will set up various awards that can be redeemed for a certain number of points, such as asking the streamer to do something (drink water, roll a die, sing a song) or getting a perk (like a role in the streamer’s Discord) or just doing something pointless (like getting timed out -- why do you want that? You don’t. But you can do it just for fun.)  
> Pog: Slang for cool/awesome. Based on the phrase “play of the game” as well as jokingly the 90s collectible toy. Derivative terms include poggers, pogchamp, etc.  
> Plumbella: a popular Sims streamer and YouTuber in real life.  
> Plumbob: the green glowing thing that hangs over a Sim’s head; the icon of the game.  
> Subs (subscriptions): Paid subscription to a channel that gets the viewer one month of perks, like no ads and special emotes in chat. Usually $5/month. Tier 2 and 3 subscribers pay more and get extra perks. Twitch keeps track of how many months in a row you subscribe.  
> Sub points: A streamer earns points based on how many subscribers they have in a particular month. Higher tiers are worth more points. If you have enough points you unlock bonuses for the entire stream, like extra slots for custom emotes.  
> Twitch baby: common joke when someone has subscribed for nine months in a row.
> 
> I would be a bad fan if I didn't thank lilsimsie, Deligracy, JamesTurnerYT, and Plumbella for inspiring me so heavily. If any of you ever see this, please know that you have had a massive positive impact on my life.


End file.
